My American Duchess (12 page)

Except they weren’t.

Because he’d be
damned
if he felt anything for a woman whom his brother had selected to wed. That was perverse.

Merry spent the ride home talking in a low voice to George, while Cedric amused himself by disparaging a musicale they had both apparently attended the night before, from the hostess’s refreshments to her guests.

As they neared Pelfords’ house, Cedric made one last attempt to separate Merry and George. “If you want a dog,” he announced in a generous tone, “I shall buy a suitable one for you. Some ladies do have dogs, after all.”

He sounded as if he were trying to convince himself, Trent thought cynically. “The Princess von Aschenberg has a dog,” he heard himself saying.

Cedric frowned.

“It has a decided resemblance to a hairy rat,” Trent clarified.

“Of course!” Cedric turned to Merry. “The princess’s Maltese can be a guide. You should think of a dog as part of your attire, like a bonnet or reticule.”

A flare of wicked amusement led Trent to chime in. “I believe the princess changes the ribbon on her dog’s topknot to match her costumes.”

“Like a maypole?” Merry sounded dubious.

Trent dismounted to say good-bye, as did Cedric.

A footman ran over and stood at Merry’s horse’s head. Waiting for a groom to bring over a mounting block, she
tickled her puppy under the chin. “George would look very well with a ribbon.”

“Where, on his tail?” Cedric scoffed.

Trent held back a grin. George’s tail was not one of his best features.

His breath caught at the generous curve of Merry’s smiling lips. If she had been his fiancée and she smiled at him in that reckless way, as if what he’d said was foolish but she forgave him for it, he would have kissed her until they were both senseless.

He watched her lean forward so that the groom could help her dismount. Her riding coat was still damp and clinging to lush breasts.

He would have pulled her off the saddle and carried her inside where no one could see them. Then he would have torn open her coat, cupped her breasts in his hands, and licked every drop of rainwater from her skin.

“I’ll pay you a call tomorrow,” Cedric was telling Merry. “I’ll bring a dog for you, a more appropriate dog.”

Merry frowned. “I have a dog.”

“Now that I know you want a pet,” Cedric observed, about an hour too late, “I shall find you an animal that will enhance your countenance rather than diminish it, as this cur will necessarily do.”

“George—” she began.

“That dog will urinate on you if given the chance. Moreover, you are holding the animal in a manner that could be deemed offensive, considering that his undercarriage is entirely visible.”

Merry bit her lip. The sight sent a bolt of lust down Trent’s thighs. He had to get out of here.

“I will bid you both good day,” Trent said. He bowed to Merry. “Miss Pelford, it has been a pleasure. Cedric . . . George.”

Merry made a perfunctory curtsy and disappeared with her puppy into the house.

Cedric turned his scowl to Trent. “Even
you
must understand that a lady of breeding cannot bring that mongrel into polite society.”

Trent shrugged. “Why not make fashion rather than follow it?”

“Miss Pelford is not yet in a position to make fashion,” Cedric said.

“That seems a harsh appraisal,” Trent observed.

“It’s drudgery, training an American to be a proper lady. I wish I’d never taken it on.”

“Surely you don’t mean it.”

Cedric ran a hand through his hair. “You needn’t start worrying about whether you’ll have to share your ha’pennies with me again. I’ve committed to marrying her. It’s just that her instincts are invariably incorrect,” he went on, as they both mounted.

“How so?”

“One could almost say that she is instinctually immodest. Hell, she’s like you in that. I suppose
you
would think that it’s perfectly fine that she cart around a mongrel with his clothes peg waving in the air. An indiscriminate pisser, moreover.”

“The puppy had been frightened, cold, and no doubt hungry for God knows how long,” Trent pointed out. “He only piddled because I startled him. And who gives a damn how she carries the animal?”

Cedric shrugged. “The dog is merely a symptom of the whole. Merry Pelford has no ladylike instincts.” To Trent’s surprise, his brother looked genuinely stricken.

“I’m sure that you can steer Miss Pelford in the right direction.”

“It’s so much work. Who would have thought? She had an English governess, after all.”

Trent had no answer, so they headed toward Cavendish Square. That exchange cleared his mind. He refused to be the bastard who stole his brother’s fiancée away. In fact, as a family member, he should try to help calm the waters.

When they were back home and grooms rushed out to take the horses, he said, “I don’t think Miss Pelford will relinquish George, even if you do find another dog for her.”

For all his fussiness, Cedric was an excellent horseman. He turned from instructing a groom to make both horses a hot mash.

“Nonsense. I know where to find the right sort of dog, a white Maltese. I’ll buy one that will not urinate in the house, let alone on Merry herself.”

“It won’t work.”

“You scarcely know the woman, I might point out.”

“I had a lengthy conversation with her at the Portmeadow ball, before I realized she was your fiancée,” Trent said.

“Indeed?” Cedric said sharply. “And where was that?”

“On the balcony. Neither of us had any idea that we would soon become family.” Trent nodded to the groom who was taking his mount, but he could feel his brother’s eyes on his back.

“I’ll bring along the new dog tomorrow and make a trade,” Cedric said, after they left the stables. “You don’t understand: women are flighty, not to say fickle. Surely you heard the gossip about my fiancée?” he asked, striding ahead in order to climb the front steps before Trent.

The orders of precedence decreed that Trent go first, but Cedric never allowed Trent to precede him. Trent didn’t give a damn about whether a duke should pass through a doorway before a lord, so they never quarreled over it.

“I have heard nothing about Miss Pelford, but she herself told me of two broken engagements in her past.”

Cedric had drawn out the flask he always kept in his coat, but it proved empty. “I think it’s more accurate to say that she has
had
two men in her past.”

The door swung open but Trent jerked his head at the butler, sending him scurrying back into the house and out of earshot. He joined Cedric on the top step and growled a question. “Are you implying that Merry—Miss Pelford—has been less than chaste with her previous beaux?”

“You really know nothing of women, do you?”

Trent was starting to think that he knew a damned sight more than his brother. Merry was a virgin; he’d bet his life on it.

“Without question, she made sport between the sheets. But I’m smarter than the two fools who came before me. I haven’t even given her a proper kiss—just busses on the lips—and believe me, she’s as hot-blooded as any wench you might meet in Covent Garden.”

Trent fought back an impulse to tear his brother limb from limb. “You are wrong,” he said, finally, voice clipped but under control. “Your fiancée is chaste.”

Cedric threw him a condescending glance. “You mustn’t rely on appearances, Duke. She clearly tired of the others when they didn’t satisfy her.”

“You are wrong.”

Cedric walked across the threshold, remarking over his shoulder, “I’ve kept her wanting, and she’s in the palm of my hand.”

Trent had cultivated an iron control since the time he was eight years old, and that control kept him in good stead now. He would gain nothing—
Merry
would gain nothing—if he knocked out his brother.

Even so, he strode forward and caught Cedric’s arm. “Do not
ever
speak about your wife-to-be in that manner again,” he said through clenched teeth.

Cedric gave a startled cough.

“Merry Pelford is in love with you. She deserves your every respect, in public and in private. She would never engage in intimacies outside of marriage, and if you can’t see her bone-deep virtue, then you don’t know her at all.”

Cedric began to struggle.

“She’s an innocent and you’ll need to keep that in mind on your wedding night. Do you understand me?” Trent hardly recognized his own voice, it was so deeply and viscerally enraged.

“You’re nothing but an animal,” Cedric said, his mouth contorting into a petulant sneer. “One would think that brothers—
twins
—could be honest with each other, but that’s not the case with us, is it? Here you are, instructing me to lie to you, not to mention the whole world.”

“There’s no lie involved, simply a modicum of respect for the woman who will bear your children.” Trent dropped his hand.

“I need a drink,” Cedric said, brushing off his sleeve. “What with my fiancée demanding my presence at the break of dawn, and you displaying all this newfound love of etiquette, I have the head of a Drury Lane doxy after a hard night.”

It couldn’t be much past ten in the morning. Cedric gave Trent a mocking smirk. “I don’t suppose you’d like to join me in a constitutional, Duke? No? I do wonder what you get out of denying yourself pleasure.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Trent said flatly. It was horrifying to realize just how relieved he felt to learn that Cedric had not yet kissed Merry.

Another sign that he’d lost his mind.

He should avoid Merry until after the wedding. Until she had become Cedric’s, in the most basic and primitive of ways.

That would change everything. He would stop feeling this ungodly compulsion that was urging him to get back on his horse and return to Portman Square.

Ask to see her. Ask to see George. Use the puppy as an excuse to flirt with his future sister-in-law.

Trent gritted his teeth and tore off his urine-stained coat, making up his mind not to think about Merry.

He succeeded—until much later that night. Asleep, he rolled over in his bed and discovered Merry lying beside him in a tangle of glossy curls.

His blood thrumming with deep joy, he raised himself above her on his hands and knees, lavishing kisses on her.

He was running a hand down her sleek side, about to round the curve of a generous breast, when she murmured something.

Trent froze.

Her eyes opened, beautiful . . . tearful?

“Merry?” he whispered. “What is it?”

“Cedric?” she asked, her voice trembling.

The name ripped through Trent’s dream like a gunshot. He awoke, gasping, fists clenched, sweating.

There was nothing he hated more than losing control.

She belonged to Cedric, damn it. He’d go to hell before he became the person who stole her from his brother. It struck him that perhaps lusting after one’s sister-in-law
was
hell, but he shoved the thought away.

Yes, it was inconvenient that he felt such a raw passion for Merry. But all that meant, really, was that it was time he found a wife.

It was probably the same for wild beasts. The time had
come, and being twins, he and Cedric had responded to it at precisely the same moment and to precisely the same woman.

He stared into the darkness, trying to convince himself that being a twin meant accepting oddities.

It didn’t work.

L
ike any self-respecting dog, George clearly felt that the bath and flea treatment were unnecessary, but he didn’t hold a grudge.

“Just look how
good
he is,” Merry told her aunt. They were supervising as a groom scrubbed George down. “He’s not even complaining, though you can tell by his eyes that he is dreadfully offended.”

Once clean and sweet-smelling, George was even more adorable than before. Buying items that every presidential dog needs—a china bowl, a blanket, a collar made of Spanish leather—took the better part of the afternoon, after which the family spent the evening trying to teach George to sit on command. He didn’t seem to be able to sit, and toppled over if they pushed his little bottom to the ground.

After he had fallen over twenty times, he began top
pling every time they said, “Sit.” Another ten times, and he began rolling over if one of them caught his eye.

“He must think we’re deranged,” Bess pointed out. “Why would we want him to roll over so many times?”

Merry scooped up her puppy and gave him more kisses. “He has such a sweet nature that he’ll roll all day just to please us.”

“He’d do anything to get more of those meat scraps,” Thaddeus said crustily. Alas, George had discovered that Thaddeus’s boots were helpful for teething, and Thaddeus hadn’t taken it well.

The boots were not George’s sole transgression; he’d also had an accident in the dining room. After that, the knife boy was enlisted to escort him to the back garden once an hour.

The following morning the secretary whom Bess had lured away from a countess arrived to detail the wedding preparation. Merry had been enthusiastic in planning her first nuptial ceremony, matter-of-fact about the second, and could only be called tepid when it came to the third, so Bess sent her off to teach George to walk on a leash.

“It was a complete and utter failure,” she told her aunt at teatime.

“He’ll learn,” Bess said, leaning down to greet George, who was so happy to see her that his tail wagged his entire body. “I cannot imagine why we never had a dog before.”

“I can point to one reason: those boots took me three months to break in,” Thaddeus said. “I don’t have time for tea because I’m meeting a man who swears he’s got a remarkable improvement on the water closet. Something to do with a self-filling cistern, whatever that is. I’ve no doubt but that it’s all nonsense, but I might as well take a look.”

Merry’s uncle had made his first fortune by inventing a mechanical poultry feeder, and his second and third by in
vesting in the inventions of others. He’d yet to find a workable apparatus in London, but he was endlessly curious, and counted a day lost in which he didn’t inspect some new device or other.

“How was the mechanical hairbrush yesterday?” Merry asked.

“The Portable Rotary Hair Brushing Machine? Foolishness, my dear, pure foolishness. No lady would want it spinning around her head, and gentlemen don’t brush for more than a few seconds. I suggested that it might have purpose as a clothing brush in a coal mine or such.”

“Perhaps as a dog brush?” Merry suggested.

“Dogs would take fright at the mechanism’s grinding noise.” And with that, Thaddeus clapped on his hat and escaped out the front door.

Bess handed Merry a teacup. “My dear, have you noticed that we haven’t had a single caller this week?”

She had noticed. But what was the point in fretting about her lack of social success? “Invitations arrive for every event that matters. Perhaps people aren’t venturing out in the rain.”

“No one is talking of anything but the charity hospital,” Bess said, “which speaks highly of your Cedric, I must say. However, I was less pleased to learn from Mrs. Plessel about a supper party in honor of the hospital, to which we are not invited.”

“Who is giving the party?”

“Mrs. Bennett.”

“I suppose that may be a snub,” Merry said. She couldn’t bring herself to care very much. George was lying politely at her feet, but the look in his eyes made it clear that he would like to eat a buttered crumpet.

“It is a definite snub. I dislike that woman, and I gather the feeling is mutual.”

Merry tried to remember what Mrs. Bennett looked like. “Is she the lady who wears sables even when the sun is shining?”

“No, you’re thinking of Mrs. Raddlesby. Mrs. Bennett always wears pearls and manages to make the choice look virtuous.” Bess snorted. She was of the opinion that pearls were aging, but that diamonds took ten years off a woman’s face.

“I can’t seem to place her,” Merry said, racking her memory. London was full of ladies with pious expressions and pearls.

“She’s one of those women who lives in a hive with other women buzzing around her, and they aren’t buzzing compliments, either. She looks at me as if I were the gardener’s wife. No: the
under
-gardener’s wife.”

“Oh, I know who she is! Mrs. Bennett is the daughter of a viscount,” Merry explained. As part of her preparation for life with Cedric, Merry was trying to memorize
Debrett’s Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland
. It was slow going, but she had made it past the nobleman whose daughter had married a common Mr. Bennett.

“I don’t care if she’s the daughter of the sultan himself,” Bess retorted. “I am almost certain that her pearls are paste, and yet she and her friends smirked at my emeralds as if I’d chosen to wear a necklace of embalmed ants.”

“‘Embalmed ants’?” Merry repeated. “Ants aren’t even green, Aunt Bess.” George had rolled over and was begging, but she shook her head. “No crumpet for you, Master George! You don’t need to grow any plumper.”

“She thinks I wear bottle glass around my neck. As if you weren’t truly an heiress, but some sort of conniver, wearing paste jewels in order to catch a titled man.”

“That’s absurd.”

“I’ll tell you what’s absurd,” her aunt said moodily. “It’s
the way all these English girls wrap themselves up like little snowflakes and drift around the edges of the room.”

Merry grinned at her. “In that analogy, Lady Caroline would be a blizzard. She has vowed to wear only white until she marries.”

“There’s another one I can’t bring myself to like. She told me that Americans were ungrateful, unreasonable, and unjust, and when I gave her a look, she said it was only her opinion, and meant as a helpful observation.”

“I’m sure she thinks it’s unjust of me to have visited London and snatched Cedric from the market. I believe she would like him for herself.” Merry reached for another crumpet. Being snubbed made her irritable, and that wasn’t good for her soul.

“She can’t afford him,” her aunt said flatly.

“What?” Merry fumbled her crumpet and it dropped onto the tray.

“Your fiancé is a second son,” Bess said. “Surely you are aware that Cedric must marry an heiress?”

“He’s not Dermot. He’s the son of a duke!”

“Here in England, the eldest son inherits the estate.” She patted Merry’s arm. “That doesn’t mean Cedric won’t make an excellent husband.”

“I didn’t know,” Merry said, shaken. How could it be that Cedric needed to marry an heiress? He dressed . . . well, he dressed far better than did his own brother, the duke.

Back home in Boston, the Pelfords lived in a mansion, surrounded by the houses of relatives and friends. The Cabots were the Cabots, and they were friends with the Peabodys, and that was about all there was to it.

In London, on the other hand, all sorts of people pretended to be richer or higher-born than they were. Or even lower-born, as the duke had in his plain black coat.

That just led to Merry telling herself—for the hundredth time—that she had no business thinking about the duke. She should think about her fiancé, her handsome, generous fiancé.

Cedric, the man of her heart.

She had just reached for the dropped crumpet when the door opened and Jenkins announced, “The Duke of Trent. Lord Cedric Allardyce.”

“Oh, hello!” Merry cried, leaping up and coming around her chair. The duke halted and bowed first in the general direction of her aunt, who remained seated, and then to Merry.

Cedric fell back a step, and swept into an elegant gesture. Since he couldn’t see her in the depths of his bow, Merry gave her buttery fingers a quick lick before picking up her skirts and dropping a curtsy.

The duke saw her do it. There was a peculiar expression in his eyes, but it definitely wasn’t censure.

When everyone was once more upright, Merry said, “How lovely to see you both again.” If she sounded a bit dizzy, it was only because the look in the duke’s eyes had unnerved her.

George was racing around and between their legs, so excited that he didn’t even yap.

“As regards that dog,” Cedric began, “I have brought a gift for you.”

“How thoughtful,” Merry exclaimed.

When she had first met the duke, she’d found his eyes rather cool, even hard; now she wondered how she ever thought that. He was obviously on the verge of laughing aloud.

Cedric headed back toward the entry, and Merry turned to the duke. “Your Grace!” she said with mock severity. “What is that naughty expression you are wearing?”

“‘Naughty’?” he echoed. “Do you know that no one has accused me of that in years?”

“Very naughty,” she said firmly. “Clearly, you know someth . . .”

Her voice trailed off because Cedric had reappeared, carrying a dog.

Or perhaps one should say half a dog, or a third of a dog. Poised on his arm, looking rather like an outsized parrot, was a tiny white dog with beady black eyes. The long hair on its head had been pulled into a topknot and tied with a ribbon.

“No!” Merry said, looking instinctively at the duke. “That is not what I think it is.”

“This is Snowdrop,” Cedric said. “She will help bring you into fashion. I have been assured that she never forgets herself.”

“Snowdrop?” Aunt Bess put in, finally coming to her feet and joining them. “Who gave her that absurd name?”

“I did,” Cedric said, chill shading his voice. He turned to Merry. “Perhaps you didn’t think that I would follow through on my promise? I promised you the perfect accoutrement for a lady.”

Merry looked from Cedric to the dog and back to the duke. Then she looked down at George, who was running circles in a frenzy of excitement.

“I warned my brother that his chance of separating you from the puppy was close to nil,” the duke said. The glint in his eye showed that he was enjoying this, even if she wasn’t.

She did not care for the fact that her fiancé had ignored her express wishes, but she was not going to air that opinion in front of the duke. “I suppose that Snowdrop can keep George from feeling lonely when we are out of the house.”

“George will be happier in the stables,” Cedric said. “Not only is Snowdrop a better breed, but her grandmother belonged to Queen Charlotte.”

The duke snorted. “George may grow to be a capital ratter; this one has nothing but a pedigree to recommend her.”

Bess shook her head at the duke. “We have no need of a ratter in this house, Your Grace.”

“There is no room for a
ratter
in any lady’s household,” Cedric put in. “That proves my point precisely.” He deposited Snowdrop on the floor. “One need only regard the two animals in proximity to determine which is the finer animal.”

George instantly scooted over with his usual look of jolly expectation, sliding the last few inches on his too-large paws. Snowdrop flattened her ears and tucked her tail firmly between her legs. She allowed herself to be thoroughly sniffed, albeit with the air of a queen suffering a necessary but objectionable visit from a physician.

“Dogs have no delicacy of mind,” Bess commented. “I should greatly dislike it if people took to sniffing each other as a form of greeting.”

Merry was used to her aunt’s ruminations on life and didn’t turn a hair, but Cedric’s mouth tightened.

Just then Snowdrop let out a surprisingly loud bark, and George instantly backed away and sat down.

“Look at that!” Merry cried. “He
can
sit!”

“Every dog can sit,” the duke stated.

“We thought perhaps his back legs were too short to sit. Or his bottom was too plump. He usually falls over.”

George did not topple, although he leaned back and away from Snowdrop, who pranced up to him and emitted a low growl.

This intimidated George so much that his plump little
body trembled all over. Merry bent down and snatched him up into her arms. “I’m afraid that they will never be friends.”

“Snowdrop is an Amazon, despite her size,” the duke said appreciatively.

“They need not be
friends
, as George will be living in the stable,” Cedric put in.

Merry shook her head at him.

“The rugs in my house in Berkeley Square have not been subjected to urine,” he said, adding acidly, “I prefer to keep it that way.”

Merry forced herself to remain silent. He didn’t mean it. In time Cedric would realize how dear George was.

Snowdrop, meanwhile, had started prancing around the duke’s feet with a coquettish waggle. When he ignored her, she sat back, lifted her button nose into the air, and yapped.

“I believe that was a command,” Merry observed.

“Miss Pelford, I beseech you to put that animal down and pick up Snowdrop, or she will become confused about her owner,” Cedric said.

Snowdrop put a paw on His Grace’s boots and whined.

“She is not confused,” Merry pointed out, nestling George even closer. “She’s in love. With the duke.”

“She is destined to have a broken heart,” His Grace said, paying her no attention.

“She and George would not be happy in the same house,” Merry said, “but you could take Snowdrop, and they could visit each other occasionally.”

“She would not be happy with me, either,” the duke stated.

“Snowdrop would do so much for your countenance,” she said mischievously, letting her eyes drift from his black coat to his plain black boots. “I think we would all agree that a touch of fashion could do wonders.”

Cedric’s face had grown even more chilly during this exchange; he turned somewhat abruptly and walked over to join Bess, who had returned to the tea tray. His rigid shoulders conveyed his offended sensibilities.